Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher, a German theologian, born in Breslau, Nov. 21, 1768, died in Berlin, Feb. 12, 1834. His father was a Reformed minister, and chaplain of a Prussian regiment in Silesia. In 1783 he was placed in the educational establishment of the Moravians at Niesky, Upper Lusatia, and in 1785 in the Moravian college at Barby. He entered the university of Halle in 1787, where he lived in the house of his uncle, Prof. Stu-benrauch. He attended the lectures of Sem-ler and Wolf, made himself acquainted with modern languages and mathematics, and studied Spinoza, Kant, Fichte, and Jacobi. After a two years' course he left the university without a fixed system of religious opinions. In 1790 he passed the examination for license, and became private tutor in the family of Count Dohna, where he spent three years. In 1794 he took orders and became assistant to his uncle at Landsberg on the Warta. From 1796 to 1802 Schleiermacher was chaplain at the Charité hospital in Berlin; and during these six years he identified himself temporarily with the so-called romantic school of poetry. In 1799 he published Reden über die Religion an die Gebildeten unter ihren Verächtern (new ed., Leipsic, 1867), which marks the transition of German theology from speculation to the restoration of positive faith.

His piety, however, was strongly tinctured with the pantheism of Spinoza. His Monologen (1800) is a description of the ethical ideal which floated before his mind, and was evidently influenced by the subjective idealism of Fichte. In 1802 he removed for two years to Stolpe in Pome-rania as court preacher. There began his translation of Plato, which he had projected with Friedrich Schlegel in Berlin. Its partial completion in 6 vols. (1804-'28) gives him a place among the best Greek scholars in Germany. His Grundlinien einer Kritik der bis-herigen Sittenlehre, which opened a new path in moral philosophy, belongs to the same period (1803). In 1804 he became extraordinary professor of philosophy and theology in Halle. After the temporary suspension of this university in 1806 he spent some time on the island of Rügen, then returned to Berlin as minister of Trinity church, and married the widow of his intimate clerical friend Willich (1809). When the university of Berlin was founded in 1810, he was elected its first theological professor, and continued in this post, combining with it his pastoral labors in Trinity church, during the rest of his life.

In connection with his colleague Neander, his former pupil in Halle, he attracted students from all parts of Germany and Switzerland. Wilhelm von Humboldt says that Schleiermacher's speaking far exceeded his power in writing, and that his strength consisted in the "deeply penetrative character of his words, which was free from art, and the persuasive effusion of feeling moving in perfect unison with one of the rarest intellects." He never wrote out his sermons, except the text, theme, and a few heads, but allowed them to be taken down during delivery and published after he had revised them. During the most critical and depressed period in the history of Prussia, he exerted a powerful influence to stir up in all classes of society those patriotic feelings which resulted in the war of deliverance and the final emancipation of Germany from French rule. He adhered to his liberal political principles during the period of reaction in favor of absolutism, which set in after the fall of Napoleon and the congress of Vienna, and subjected himself to strong suspicion in high quarters.

He assisted in the union of the Lutheran and Reformed confessions in Prussia at the tercentennial celebration of the reformation (1817), and defended it, although he regarded himself as belonging rather to the Reformed type of Protestantism, and advocated in his own way even the Calvinistic scheme of a double predestination as subservient to an ulterior design of a final universal salvation. He favored strongly the introduction of the presbyterian and synodical form of government. He was one of the compilers of the new Berlin hymn book (1829), which opened the way for a hym-nological reform in all parts of Germany. - Schleiermacher was small of stature, and slightly deformed by a humpback; but his face was noble, earnest, sharply defined, and highly expressive of intelligence and kindly sympathy; his eye keen, piercing, and full of fire; his movements quick and animated. His mind retained its vitality and freshness to the last. His productions, including the posthumous publications from his lectures, embrace philosophical ethics, dialectics, psychology, politics, pedagogics, church history, hermeneutics, Christian ethics, dogmatics, practical theology, sermons, and a large number of philosophical, exegetical, and critical essays. The Old Testament alone was excluded from his lectures.

His literary remains were intrusted to his friend and pupil Dr. Jonas, and from them as well as from his published writings and numerous manuscripts of students a complete collection of his works has been published in three divisions, respectively entitled Zur The-ologie, Predigten, and Zur Philosophie, including his lectures on psychology (1862) and Das Leben Jesu (1864); the whole publication embraces 31 volumes (1835-64). His correspondence with J. Chr. Gass was edited in 1852 by W. Gass, and that with other friends appeared under the title Aus Schleiermacher's Leben (4 vols., 1858-62). His autobiography, extending only to 1794, was first published in 1851 in Niedner's Zeitschrift für historische The-ologie. His philosophical and theological views have been discussed by Braniss (1822), Del-brück (1827), Baumgarten-Crusius (1834), Ro-senkranz(1836), Strauss (1839), Neander, Twesten, Baur, and others. Among his biographers are Auberlen (1859), K. Schwartz (1861), Elisa Maier (1863), Dilthey (1867 et seq.), and Schenkel (1868). See also Schleiermacher's Reden über die Religion und ihre Nachwir-kungen auf die evangelische Kirche Deutsch-lands, by Albrecht Ritschl (Bonn, 1874).